Dead Space 3 Demo Overlook

The Dead Space 3 demo won’t be released to the public until January 22, but with the way the official Facebook is handing out codes one would think that day was already here. We’ve claimed some of their codes and played through the demo. Here’s what you’re missing if you haven’t had the chance to do so yourself.

The demo starts with Isaac waking up in a wreckage hanging upside down. Upon exiting the wreckage Isaac finds himself in the middle of a brutal blizzard and struggles to even see a couple feet in front of his own hand. The landscape can only be described as something that you would have seen in the first of the Lost Planet series.

And of course, things go from bad to worse. As with the previous 2 Dead Space games, the jump scares are in abundance and will catch you completely off guard. Half of them aren’t even related to enemies! There was a part in which you hear a voice transmission about Isaac saying that the Marker demands Isaac’s death. The story is still shrouded in darkness and i’m sure we’re all going to enjoy seeing where it will lead us.

There is various new elements to the game as well as some changes to previous systems, below I’ll go over any that have changed or that have been added.

Suit Upgrades – With the last 2 games you would use power nodes to upgrade your ‘Rig’ which would improve such things as air and health as well as being able to upgrade your stasis component. In Dead Space 3 you have a specific area to deal with your suit (selecting a new suit and upgrading your current) and a workbench which you use to create weapons, items, blueprints and store items.

The suit upgrade system uses resources that you gather to create additional parts to attach to your suit, for example you have to create the armour that gets attached to your suit. You don’t just go to a store and buy the next level of suit anymore. The demo only gives you one suit to work with but i’d be willing to wager that each suit has has perks specific to that suit.

Weapon Creation/Modification – As you progress through the game you will find weapon parts lying around, this can range from frames to circuits to energy systems. Each one will allow you to create a completely different type of weapon, which leaves the game wide open to multiple styles of gameplay. You can build yourself a long ranged weapon with a close range force shot which will push back any enemies that get too close or you can build yourself a rapid fire weapon with a underlying flamethrower if you so wish. The possibilities will keep you varying your game style more often than you’d imagine.

With the possibilities however, comes restrictions. You can only carry 2 weapons at a time so you have to choose wisely what to take with you, you don’t want to get caught in a large open environment with nothing but close combat weapons and vice-versa.

Weapon Creation/Testing Environment – For those of you who have played Ghost Recon: Future Soldier you will be no stranger to this kind of idea. It’s a nifty feature that has been added in which you are put into a large sealed off room with nothing but a workbench where you can create and test all the various weapons that are available in the game. Every weapon part is supplied and a number of circuit upgrades are also supplied so you can see just how powerful a weapon you can truly make! There are no targets for you to practice on however which makes things interesting since you can’t really see the effect that it will have on the enemies.

Item Crafting – With the previous games you would collect credits and power nodes to buy and upgrade whatever you needed at the time, this time round however it works a bit differently. Of course you’ll still find items left behind by enemies as well as in boxes, but in the workbench you’ll be able to create them as you need them.

For this to happen though, you need to gather resources. There are different kinds of resources and each one gets used for different things, from building weapon parts, to med kits, to ammo packs, they cover it all which eliminates the need for power nodes and credits.

No More Individual Ammo Kinds – This may sound a bit odd, but there is now only one collective ammo kind. They stack in tens in your inventory and for each one you will get a total of twenty shots. So for each stack of ammo you have you will have a total of two hundred shots for your selected weapon. Of course they do begin to appear few and far between and each type of weapon will consume a different amount per shot, so be careful and aim well.

Co-op – Dead Space 3 introduces the ability to play through the horror with some backup! With the drop-in, drop-out feature you can casually join and leave a story game and easily continue without having to restart from the last checkpoint or save point.

Of course, this also brings in the possibility of being split up and having to go separate paths as well as the possibility of having some interesting set pieces. Sadly I didn’t get a chance to play through the co-op portion of the demo due to not being able to find anyone to play with.

Crouching, Cover System and Rolling – The game does give you the crouching and cover system in the tutorial however the rolling part I found out about accidentally due to my finger slipping off of the RB button.

The crouching/cover system I found works really well! It is still free movement unlike Gears of War where you get pinned to the cover itself, it allows for you to continue to move just at a slightly slower pace due to being crouched but helps protect you from gunfire (yes, gunfire.)

Isaac will automatically pop in and out from the cover when you hit the aim button giving you the exact response and timing required.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the demo and cannot wait to get my hands on the full game, this is definitely a day 1 purchase for myself and i’m sure it will be for many others.

The game has taken the best elements of the previous games and improved greatly upon them whilst not going over the top. The addition of co-op is a great choice and will offer quite a few laughs cause come on, who doesn’t like laughing at others being scared?

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http://www.geekenstein.com/ Craig Kandiko

I just played the demo. It looked gorgeous. I want to try the co-op soon. I’m not sure about all the weapon customizations.

http://twitter.com/Xx334xX Terrence B.

Friend keeps begging me so im gonna skip 1&2 and play 3 co-op just for my friend…..cause im cool like that. Also waiting for public demo

person

In the weapon customization room you can summon enemies with a button.